Worcestershire is helping to address the lack of women playing chess. We have just won the MCCU u120 championships with a team that is one third women i.e. 4 players out of 12. Two from Halesowen and two from Redditch.

Althhough some of that comes about from there being so few of them to start with etc.

In answer to the questions right at the start - yes there's a huge difference in numbers between social and competitive bridge. Social bridge is ~50/50 but genuine competitive bridge still has a substantial male majority.

Much healthier than in chess though - maybe 1/8 at county level etc. 'Social' chess doesn't really exist because the game doesn't support it terribly well.

And , sad to say, the number of female chess players is much healthier than the number of female trainspotters.

We have made big efforts to clean up our act in terms of removing sexism from the trainspotting scene, but this has not resulted in the progress we would have liked in terms of making trainspotting more attractive to women. We can't work out why.

stevencarr wrote:And , sad to say, the number of female chess players is much healthier than the number of female trainspotters.

We have made big efforts to clean up our act in terms of removing sexism from the trainspotting scene, but this has not resulted in the progress we would have liked in terms of making trainspotting more attractive to women. We can't work out why.

Itâ€™s pretty much the same in fishing - both fresh water and trawler fishing.